It is unusual for Icebox to advertise a book by poets with no obvious connection to the Hailstone Haiku Circle, but Unexpected Gift is an e-book of collaborative haikai ‘poems’, authored by Genjuan (& Kikakuza) Haibun Contest multiple awardees, Sonam Chhoki (Bhutan) and Geethanjali Rajan (India), and they have both expressed to me gratitude at how the Contest helped to bring them together and for my personal encouragement of their writing over the years. It’s a joy to be able to do so and for sure, there is some very delicate dancing between the authors here. This is very sophisticated, if that’s permissible in such a simple world as haiku. Published by Éditions des Petits Nuages in Canada, the book contains 25 responsive ‘poems’ chosen from 7 years of writing together – featuring haiku, senryu, tanka, haibun and tanbun – with a foreword by Mike Montreuil. The beautiful cover art and interior illustrations are by Dhaatri Vengunad Menon. What I found especially interesting was the way that, irrespective of whether the component parts were haiku or senryu or tanka or prose, they were treated as if the resultant composite piece was one longer poem. Available on Kindle: ASIN: B09KV9SMNW. Highly recommended!
A rengay from the book (click on the page to read; Chhoki in italics):